What the heck!
My parents had it so much easier. There was none of this stuff on television when I was growing up. Back then, you had to leave the house to find something racy to watch. Back then I could even leave the house all day without my parents fearing I might never return.
This television thing has me flustered. When did it all go awry. I’ll likely never be able to pinpoint a precise time when things began to turn. Instead, by time my own daughter could understand what the hell those two people on the screen were doing, the process had been in the works for years. I guess I just never noticed it until I had my own child.
I first caught
on to how things on television had changed when we were watching cartoons
together when she was around eight. Eventually, I discovered an insatiable
appetite among writers of children’s shows for placing a fart every now and
then in the script. Really!? Granted, it is not the worst thing in the world. After
all, most kids by time they’re eight have heard the goofy sound nearly every
day.
The problem
with using a fart in a kid’s show is that it is a cheap laugh. I mean, what kid
doesn’t think a fart is funny? I can just see a writer, lying in bed late at
night, staring at his or her computer, trying to finish a script. “I need
something funny right here but I can’t think of anything. I know. I’ll have the
character fart. Yea, that’s worth a laugh.”
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| Gunsmoke (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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| Amanda Blake as Kitty Russell from the television program Gunsmoke. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I can remember watching old westerns with my dad at a young age. Those guys never farted. In fact, shows like Gunsmoke were lessons in law and order, what was right and wrong and how Miss Kitty and Marshal Dillon could have something going on without showing them hop in the sack.
Times
change, but not always for the better.
